While we might have been given two new pieces of art to get us all hot and bothered for Mass Effect 3's eventual arrival, it turns out the wait will be longer than the previously announced release date of November this year, with EA putting a very loose "Q1 2012" down as the game's new launch window.

Obviously any game of this caliber spending more time in development can only be for the good in the long-run, and let's face it, this year is a mammoth one anyway with some massive titles set to arrive, and Mass Effect 3 would have been going up against the likes of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Battlefield 3, to name but two, but it's still sad news, nonetheless.

Interestingly, in an earnings call, EA CEO John Riccitiello cited the game's release date change as a necessity based on changes to the game's gameplay mechanics, which could be taken as alarming based on the language he used.

One of the things the team up at Edmonton has done is... essentially adjust some of the gameplay mechanics and some of the features, which you'll see at E3, that can... essentially address a far larger market opportunity.

Take from that what you will, and obviously we'll know more come E3, but we're mildly concerned now that the game might be dumbed down even further to cater to this "larger market" (though we are talking about BioWare here, so we do have a little faith).

I'm totally ok with this news. If they want to delay it, they probably have good reason. Big publishers usually prefer to push things out half-baked than to delay them outside of the lucrative holiday season window, so I don't really get what you mean about EA being EA.

IMO mass effect is the kind of game that doesn't really need to be launched during the holiday slaw alongside Battlefield and Call of Duty. but then, neither is Skyrim for that matter.

Well realistically, we have no idea what the state of gameplay changes they'd made since Mass Effect 2 are. Since they haven't showed anything from 3 yet, there's no point of reference anyway. So I don't think it's really cause for alarm.

"dumbed down" is a pretty loaded term that I'm not sure really applies as much to a game like Mass Effect as it would to more complex games. ME's strength has always been in the storytelling, so if they're making gameplay more accessible to a wider range of player capabilities it could just be something benign like LA Noire's supposed option to skip hard sections of gameplay if you get stumped.

"dumbed down" is a pretty loaded term that I'm not sure really applies as much to a game like Mass Effect as it would to more complex games. ME's strength has always been in the storytelling

The original ME yes - brilliant game and story. But Mass Effect 2 was all about invoking the cover system to run from behind one strategically placed box (where you know enemies will spawn straight away) to another. You spend 90% of the game recruiting people with vague story-related fluff mixed in ... and 10% actually doing useful story-related stuff.

I would have simply assumed it is delayed because that time period is looking pretty saturated for releases and it'd get a larger market during a quieter release period. With 5 or 6 great games all coming out at once people are going to at most only be buying two games, if that. I think I remember reading ages ago that a games release week is more important to it's overall sales than it is for films and there is always a lot of focus on opening weekends for films.

I'm really sceptical about it being due to mechanic changes for a wider audience since it's the 3rd in the series and unlike COD it has a strong story and you can't exactly encourage new players through some cosmetic game changes alone.